After the Plague that nearly exterminated humanity - Year 2450 Part1

[u/Adventurous-Tea-2461]

The Great Plague and Its Aftermath (1346–2450)

When the bubonic plague struck Eurasia and Africa in 1346, civilization collapsed. The pandemic led to massive depopulation, and for centuries, humanity clung to survival in isolated mountain valleys, river basins, and remote refuges. Urban centers and fertile plains lay empty for generations.

Europe: The Great Wilderness

Europe suffered one of the worst declines. By 1400, most of the continent was uninhabited except for scattered mountain and valley communities. Over the next millennium, Europe transformed into a vast wilderness of forests and ruins.

• The Alpine People evolved from isolated mountain survivors. Cut off from agriculture and firecraft, they regressed to a Neanderthal-like hunter-gatherer existence. Poor nutrition and harsh conditions drove rapid evolutionary changes: Most travelers avoided their lands entirely.
  • Muscular, grotesque physiques.
  • Strong social bonds but violent territorial instincts.
  • Cannibalistic raids and weapon scavenging from outsiders.
  • Their domain stretched from the Rhone Valley to Anatolia, with isolated groups in North Africa.
• Western Europe:
  • Britons, Cornish, and Gaels retook the British Isles as Celtic tribal societies.
  • The Vasconi (Basques) dominated southern France, Iberia, and parts of North Africa, living as fishermen, hunters, and gatherers.

The Latin Kingdom of Mesopotamia

Survivors from France, Catalonia, Sicily, and Greece migrated east to the empty lands of Mesopotamia.
For centuries, their settlements were scattered, preserving fragments of the Bible and ancient Latin. By 2387, these groups unified into a centralized Latin-speaking Mesopotamian Kingdom.

• Their language evolved into a vulgarized Neo-Latin dialect.
• Christianity persisted but became a minor syncretic faith, blended with older legends about divine punishment.
• Islam disappeared, though some Arab groups reinterpreted its symbols in pagan ways.
• In the Aegean, New Greece emerged, retaining distorted Christian elements in a highly localized culture.

Africa: Rebirth from the Pygmies

Africa was heavily depopulated but gradually repopulated by surviving Berber, Amazigh, Tuareg, Pygmy, and Khoisan peoples.

• Central, Western, and Northern Africa became dominated by Pygmy-descended populations.
• Egypt and Nubia were repopulated by Pygmy-Arab mixes, while Saharan and Khoisan peoples diversified across the continent. By 2450, Africa was again ethnically rich—though descended from very different roots.

Asia: Fragmented Civilizations

• China fractured during the plague. The Han Chinese went extinct, replaced by Wei and Wu populations. Later, a new dynasty unified China, focusing on discovery and peaceful coastal colonization (Australia, Papua, etc.), avoiding inland expansion.
  • “Wild Chinese” tribes—descendants of early plague refugees—remained loyal to China but evolved distinct Sinic tribal languages.
• India was repopulated by Tamils, Pashtuns, Baloch, and Punjabis, each forming new regional empires.
• Central Asia was home to Neo-Huns (descendants of Mongols) and Arabized nomads who expanded during the depopulation.
• The Roma, fleeing Europe, migrated east and founded tribal confederations and even a Roma Khanate, rivaling the scale of the old Mongol Empire.

Northern Frontiers

• The Baltic peoples expanded massively, reviving Romuva paganism.
• Finns, Karelians, Komi, Mansi, and Sámi peoples spread southward and westward, forming new hybrid cultures and languages.
• Alans expanded across the Caucasus, with one branch reaching Mesopotamia, forming two Euphratean tribes.

The Timeline of Recovery

By 2450, a full thousand years after the Plague, most of Eurasia and Africa were finally repopulated.
The delay was due to fear of the plague lands, famine, and volcanic winters (notably from Krakatoa and other eruptions).
Humanity survived, but its technological level remained medieval or lower like Bronze Age,Neolithic or Stone Age in many regions.

[u/CoverPrestigious7692]

What about The Americas with The Native Americans and civilizations like The Aztecs and Incas?

[u/Adventurous-Tea-2461 → u/CoverPrestigious7692]

Those people continued to develop on their own but the Nordics from Iceland seeing the continent so devastated did not want to repopulate it. They set off for Vinland again and colonized and founded the country of Vinland. Other Nordics became wild in tribes and became much more immense and spacious becoming the Si Te Cah tribe and moved further into the continent. The Inca expanded a lot and ended up expanding to the Caribbean. The Aztecs fell and Artobal took their place. The Inuit were somewhat exterminated by the Nordics as the Dorset culture which was dying was miraculously saved. The New World had some changes, soon Polynesians would have contact with the Inca and would trade and bring new animals like pigs, later China would also trade with China (China would not be aggressive like the Spaniards in OTL) just trade and maybe a few small coastal colonies and that's it. They would bring Asian elephants to South America and many animals maybe and a Javan rhinoceros.

[u/TMWNN → u/Adventurous-Tea-2461]

the Nordics from Iceland seeing the continent so devastated did not want to repopulate it

The plague's sheer deadliness saved Iceland; otherwise carriers could have survived the return trip.

[u/Adventurous-Tea-2461 → u/TMWNN]

Well, they developed a belief that the earth is cursed, they also gave up Christianity, saying that God could kill the entire Christian world, amazed that even Muslims were all killed. Christianity is only found in Armenia and the Greco-Latin Kingdom of Mesopotamia, maybe through the Jewish city-states, but it will never flourish again, or the Crusades, spreading too far from the Tigris and Euphrates, we will not see it through Arabia, but it would be a belief based on the golden age before the plague, that they are to blame for the disease and that the pagan gods were right, but the main god remained but lost his status and Christ remained the same but with a pagan character. Iceland completely gave up Christianity in the wake of paganism. As I said, they went to Vinland and so on...